Is Adropin legal in Australia?

A secreted peptide whose blood level falls with obesity and age in humans. Every human study is a measurement, not a treatment: no one has given adropin to a person, and the cognitive benefit that gets quoted was in aging mice.

Adropin is encoded by ENHO and circulates at low nanogram per millilitre concentrations. It came out of mouse work suggesting a peptide required for metabolic homeostasis and for preventing obesity-associated insulin resistance.

Mechanism: A secreted peptide that in animal work influences fuel selection, favouring glucose over fatty acid oxidation in muscle, and improves insulin sensitivity and endothelial function. Receptor biology is unsettled: GPR19 has been proposed and is disputed, and a 2025 review frames adropin as a cardio-metabolic hormone in the periphery and a neurohormone in the brain, which is a way of saying the mechanism differs by tissue and is not pinned down in either.

Regulatory history: Not a drug. Adropin is an endogenous peptide measured in research studies. No adropin product is approved anywhere and no interventional human trial has been registered.

Registers or lists therapeutic goods on the ARTG and schedules substances in the Poisons Standard. Many peptides are Schedule 4 (prescription only), so possession without a prescription and personal importation are restricted even when no product is registered.

The classification above is the The Longevity Archive reading of Therapeutic Goods Administration listings for Adropin at the reviewed date, not a legal opinion. Rules change, and importing, prescribing and possessing a compound can each be treated differently. Check the regulator directly before acting on anything here.